The Paris Review No. 173

Spring 2005

From Chicago to Chisinau—Aleksandar Hemon on the trail of an anarchist: “How did his hope so quickly turn to disappointment? How did the Land of the Free kill him, at the age of nineteen, months after he had arrived? This is what I wanted to write about.” “Psychic castration”—Les Murray looks back on his school years: “When American students asked me many years later what I thought about the Columbine massacre, I horrified them by saying, ëWeíre shooting back now.í” Short fiction by A. S. Byatt and Jack Livings: “The children made chase, but the dog was too fast for them, cutting a jagged path through several of the older girls and boys who tried to intercept it at the corner. Zheng waited with Chen Wei, still gripping his butcher knife with two hands.”